Andrea Petkovic has set an exclamation mark at the start of the French Open 2018: With her victory over Kristina Mladenovic, the Darmstadt native continued her previous top performances.
It was New Year’s Eve 2017, when Andrea Petkovic sat in Brisbane with a glass of red wine and thought about the big picture. About her life as a tennis player, but also about her life after her professional career. Petkovic was always afraid of falling into a “deep, dark hole” later, somehow sinking into “complete disorientation”. But after this evening of reflection the woman from Darmstadt saw more clearly, she developed her plans lonely and took “real pressure off her soul”: “Suddenly the end of the tennis tour was no longer so full of fear for me”.
Petkovic also decided to find back to her roots in all possible freedom and determination over the next few months, “not to question everything if things don’t really work out”. And above all this: “I wanted to be the fighting Petko again. One that returns to biting. Who wants to win by dying like she did when she was 17 or 18.”
She has not always succeeded in doing so since the last day of the old year when she tried to organize her life. Petkovic experienced some great moments, for example at the Australian Open, when she beat Petra Kvitova in the opening round, 10:8 in the decisive set. Often the bad doubts returned, after frustrating experiences on the courts, after setbacks or bad luck. However, she remained true to her noble purpose: “Defeat did not mean the end of the world for me. I always kept my head up.”
Also, when she decided to go down to the Second League of World Tennis in order to finally feel the “feeling of winning”: “Wins should become something everyday, not defeats”. There, at the smaller tournaments, she also found something of the gallantry, poisonousness and greed that had made her a growing professional player: “If you play against opponents who fight for their sporting survival, you will also become harder and stronger yourself.
On Monday afternoon, when she defeated French public favourite Kiki Mladenovic in two sets on Court Suzanne Lenglen, the second French Open show place, Petkovic played the way Petkovic desperately wished: courageous, courageous, strong nerves, aggressive, cheeky. It was indeed a leap in time into a better past, into that time when Petkovic was the first German to rise to the top of the world and produce headlines about a “new German Fräuleinwunder”.
“She has shown that she still has great tennis in her. Then, when she believes in herself,” said Barbara Rittner, head of the German Tennis Federation. Great tennis Petkovic last played on the big stage four years ago, when she reached the semi-finals of the Open French Championships. Late in her life in the travelling circus Petkovic had admitted to an elementary mistake, even before New Year’s Eve in Brisbane and her personal plan for the future: According to Petkovic, she had always played tennis for the wrong reasons. Initially to prove that she could keep up with the Kerbers, Görges´ and Lisickis.
Later, to show that she could make a comeback after injuries. “But now I only play tennis because I love tennis. Because I like this vagabond life and the duels on the pitch,” says Petkovic. She has also refrained from the ambition “to play as beautifully as possible and to win beautifully”. Petkovic just wants to win, how, it doesn’t matter. “For this is me. The fighter. The player who bites and scratches”, she says, “it must be such a story of blood, sweat and tears for me.”
Petkovic, you know, is not really one for whom tennis is their whole heavenly kingdom. She takes care of a thousand things, writes about God, the world, the pitfalls of self-optimization and the search for identity in columns (SZ-Magazin). Writing will also be part of her future, she wants to go back to New York after her career and study there. But now and here she is a tennis player with heart and soul. And with ambitious intentions: “I want to get back to the top 10. And I know it’s not impossible.”